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Sugar Overdose

27 Mar

I’ve been eating not all that great lately and I think I am (I can’t believe I am about to say this!)…all sugared out.

I am not only not craving/desiring/wanting things with overt amounts of sugar in them I am actively craving things that aren’t all sugary sweetness.

How crazy is that??

no more sugar? say whaaaa???

no more sugar? say whaaaa???

I don’t even want my go-to spoonful of peanut butter lately. If it wasn’t for having no other symptoms I’d say I must be sick! lol

Can a person eat too much sweet stuff, or just in general not good-for-you stuff and have their bodies rebel? If so, I think mine has done it.

For the past couple days all I’ve really been wanting are fresh fruit, bland meals, simple foods that have no sweetness to them. Seriously, what has happened to my tastebuds??

Now, you might be thinking that this is a great thing, that it makes it easier to say no to treats but it oddly has had the opposite affect. I’m so freaked out by this that I keep trying various sugary treats, even though I don’t want them, because I think I should want them and I feel like something has gone wrong because I am not craving them. How messed up is that?! A lot, I know!

I’ve decided to stop with the contrary, ridiculous behaviour and as of right now I am going to be eating healthier, which will result in my eating the types of foods I am craving. Keeping in mind payday isn’t until Friday sooooo the changes will be quite minor until I can afford groceries…hopefully the change in foods will get me back to feeling more like myself. I know the change in foods will be good for my weight loss, workouts, dragon boat training, self-esteem…crap, why’d I ever stop eating healthy when it has so many positive side effects?? And don’t say cause I’m a dummy, I already know that! lol 😛

Combined with my changing back to healthier foods I keep thinking about trying CrossFit. I hear amazing things about it, both good and bad and soooo badly want to indulge my curiosity. However, I don’t want to be the last person to finish, or the weakest person there, or well, the suckiest. Which I’m fairly certain I would be cause I’ve heard what some of the workouts are and I’m fairly certain if I tried doing those workouts I’d die right there in the gym lol. What stops me the most from trying it out is the cost, I have yet to find a CrossFit price that doesn’t seem exorbitant and way out of my price range. No way I am spending over $100 a month to work out, I don’t have that kind of expendable income, whiiiiich pretty much keeps me solidly in the camp of wanting-to-try-but-can’t-cause-I-can’t-afford-it. sigh.

I don't have the designer purse either :P

I don’t have the designer purse either 😛

I know a lot of people who’d say it is money well spent, totally worth it, and then question me about if I feel my health and well-being were worth so little to me. I would like to point out it’s not that I don’t think my health and fitness are not worth the expense, it’s that if I have to choose between being able to pay rent, pay my other bills and have a bit left over, I’m going that route rather than paying for one month of CrossFit and having to skip a bill because my pay cheque doesn’t stretch far enough to pay for everything. I mean c’mon, if my pay cheque stretched enough to pay for everything I wanted I’d totally of signed up for that lipo already! 😉 lol

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How I Handle Pain

26 Mar

sigh, I am that person who always thinks “it doesn’t hurt that much, I’ve hurt worse, suck it up and deal” when something hurts. I think this way for all pain, whether it is an organ that has twisted and is dying (totally happened), a bleeding finger I bashed during a dragon boat race (true story) or my hips (my current true story). I try to just, I dunno, deal, shrug.

suck it up

I don’t know if people would consider it a wise way of dealing with pain, but it’s my way. There are of course exceptions, obviously. When the pain from the dying organ got too much to deal with I went to the ER, I waited hmm, almost 24 hours before going, then had to wait 48 hours longer because the stupid doctor didn’t believe I was in pain and kept putting off doing anything to help me until I insisted. I’m still irritated about that but should probably let it go since it’s in the past… 😛

Same thing with the hips, when I could no longer walk because the right hip was in super intense pain (and well, it wouldn’t really move anymore – fyi totally awkward situation that) I went to the ER. That was way back in the beginning of January and I am still dealing with the hip issues, arg.

I got a doctor, that referred me to a specialist, who has been sending me for tests and I’m irritated with the whole thing and wanna call it quits. But then a day like today happens and I think “oh yeah, that’s why I am still going through with all these lame doctors appointments”

Yesterday I got my hips ultrasounded, weird huh? It felt weird, and I got that icky ultrasound gunk on my pants, ewwww! *pout* The guy who controlled the wand informed me that I am too young to be having hip problems (no, really?? I hadn’t realized that! *rolls eyes*), he also informed me he didn’t think he saw much of anything. Some fluid but not all that much. I was taking this as good news since the other tests I’d had (the multiple x-rays and CT scan) all showed fluid in the hip which is usually a sign of infection whiiiiich from doctor’s faces when they say that seems like it must be a bad thing….I decided that if he saw “not all that much fluid” it must be going away on its own which means I must be closer to no more hip problems. Sounds good, right?

Today however both my hips were complaining. 😦 I am not impressed. I want to say it is the ultrasounds fault but not sure if that is right or not. The x-rays and CT scan all made my hips hurt way worse than they had been already because of the painful positions they put my legs in to get various shots of my hips. For the ultrasound I just had to lay there while he dug that wand thing in to me, shrug, not that big a deal. I’d say hands down this was the easiest hip test I’ve had so far. 🙂

But like I said, today my hips hurt. I can’t sit for very long because the pain just builds and builds and builds so I get up and walk and then I’m hurting because I am walking. Apparently I can’t win. Crap. Oh, and to make it worse, instead of it being just the right hip it’s both of them at the same level of pain today, stupid hips.

I got prescribed at my last specialist appointment some drugs. They are pain pills that are apparently super harsh to the stomach so they are combined with something that is supposed to help the stomach, greeeeeat. Took me forever to fill the prescription cause I don’t like taking pills, I only filled it because I thought the doc might ask if they helped at my next appointment and I wanted to truthfully be able to tell him I tried one lol. 😛 While I was out today I kept kicking myself for having the pills at home because I thought if there was gonna be a day to pop one, it’d be today. When I got home however my decision about that wavered.

When I’m in pain I have a checklist of questions that goes something like this:

(1) have you hurt worse at some point? If the answer is yes, don’t take the pain pill.

(2) can you still physically function? If the answer is yes, don’t take the pain pill.

(3) does the pill have side effects you don’t wanna deal with? If the answer is yes, don’t take the pain pill.

(4) can you stay in and rest/apply heat/wallow in misery without inflicting your misery on to others? If the answer is yes, don’t take the pain pill.

You get the idea…if I can manage to avoid taking meds, I will. shrug.

So by the time I got home I was all, “dude, you’ve hurt worse, your hip is still able to move, you don’t have to do anything super impressive tonight so you can use the heating pad and try to rest, suck it up and don’t take the pills. save them for when it is really bad. don’t be a wimp!”

don't take the pills!

don’t take the pills!

Which would be how I came to be sitting here, chilling, no meds in my system, heat on my hips, and two spots of matching pain throbbing in my hip joints. Lovely.

Even if I wanted to I can’t take the pills now, you have to take them with “lots of food” according to the pharmacist and it is too late in the evening for eating, shrug, means I’ll just deal with it. I’ll be glad tomorrow I didn’t cave and take a pill today but it does make me wonder, will I ever end up taking one of these pills??

no wimps

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No Gender On The Boat

18 Mar
who'd of thought I'd write one of these??

who’d of thought I’d write one of these??

I don’t usually think about gender inequality. Maybe I should, maybe if women don’t keep an eye out and fight against gender inequality it will slowly sneak back in to our lives and bam! we get blindsided by it and don’t know how to respond. Maybe we, my generation I mean, has gotten lazy because we just assume gender inequality is no longer an issue, well, at least in our first world country existence.

I make jokes about gender inequality, about how some things are “boy jobs” (like killing spiders and taking out the garbage), I never really mean it, obviously anything a guy can do a woman can do and vice versa. It’s not a matter of a person’s gender that decides what they can do, it is what they have been taught, or what they are interested in, or what they have been exposed to. If I was exposed to car repair type things growing up I’d probably have a better idea of how to change the oil in my suv, or change the tire, or I dunno, do suv engine type things. I could still learn how my suv engine works now, I just have no real interest in learning that, shrug. I don’t doubt that I could learn, and I also don’t doubt that there are a lot of women out there who can do car engine type things.

Because I personally feel that anybody can learn to do anything I don’t keep an eye out for gender inequality and I personally haven’t experienced it…until now…

We have a new coach for our dragon boat team, the coach is a woman. I didn’t think anything about it when meeting her because all but one dragon boat coach I have had has been a woman. As long as they are a good coach who cares about anything else, right?

Well, this coach is gender biased, against women. That’s right, she is a woman who is sexist against women. How does that even work??

Our team is a mixed team, meaning we have men and women on the boat. At race festivals there are rules about how many women must be on the boat for a race, it is usually 6 or 8 women minimum. So our new coach is saying we should recruit more men and then on race days have the minimum number of women on the boat we can get away with and fill the rest of the boat with men.

Lemme tell ya, the women on our boat were not impressed with this. She mentioned this at our first practice but I missed that practice because I was sick and thought maybe what I was being told was taken out of context or made to sound worse than it actually is but nope. At every practice since this has come up.

Our women are strong, some of our women are stronger than some of our men. We don’t slack, we don’t let the guys do all the work and just sit there looking pretty, we work hard, we train hard, we pull our weight. But now we are being told that on race day, despite being good paddlers, despite showing up to practices, despite working hard, we will be swapped out so there can be more guys on the boat, regardless of which paddler has more experience, or shows up to more practices, or has earned a chance to race.

No.

Just…no. That’s not right.

So now us women find ourselves in an uncomfortable position because not only is our new coach saying this but our captain is siding with her. We were muttering to each other during warm up, suggestions were made quietly that maybe all the woman should boycott one practice to show what is missing when we aren’t there, comments were thrown out that if we aren’t going to get to race then we won’t be showing up to practices and giving our time to the team if the team is going to shelve us. But for all that we were unhappy and angry and quietly speaking to each other we weren’t speaking out. We weren’t calling bullshit on this sexist regime that seemed to be slowly taking over our team. It’s bad enough for a coach who is new to our team and who maybe hasn’t realized just how strong our women are to say this but for our captain who knows us, knows how hard we work, to side with her because of reasons I can’t even fathom, well, it’s enough to make a girl want to walk out on practice.

This was the first practice I have ever had where I didn’t give it my all. Why should I give everything at practice if I’m not going to get to race? Why give so much of myself to my team if I am not an equal member of my team? Over the span of the practice my anger at the situation grew but I had no idea what to do about it. I can’t just yell at the captain, what will that get me? Kicked off the team probably. Anger didn’t seem like the right way to respond to this situation but I couldn’t look past my anger to see what should be done.

After practice, when we were all by the lockers our captain brought it up, said we as a team needed to talk about this because people seemed upset. He said that we had agreed as a team that we wanted to move up to the next level and maybe we didn’t realize sacrifices would need to be made in order to get to that next level. To which one of the women responded that it is the team, as it is now, with our women paddlers, who got the team to where it is, who brought us to the level we are at, and that shouldn’t be discounted. It was also asked why did he think we couldn’t get to the next level with the women on our team paddling? Who says we can’t get there if we race with women on the boat? Other things were said, comments made, the new coach walked in on our pow-wow and threw her two cents in to the ring. In the end a vote was taken, who wanted to keep things as is, not recruit anymore men to the boat, keep our ratio of women-to-men, and do our best. Hands went up all around. Even the guys hands. One of the guys said who races should be based on who earns a spot on the boat on race day which we all agree with, it’s always been like that with us. If you show up to practice, if you train hard, if you are a good paddler, basically if you earn your seat, then you race. If you slack off, don’t show to practices, don’t try to improve your technique then you stand a higher chance of being sat out on race day (assuming we have more paddlers than spots in the boat).

I’m glad this got brought out in the open and talked about, that people could say to the team what they were thinking/feeling about this new policy, but I’m also still upset. This shouldn’t have happened. Gender has never been an issue on the boat, it should never have become one. It should always be about who earned their spot, who worked for it, not about if you’re a man or woman.

I also don’t know if I believe that on race day there won’t be more women sat out than men. We won’t really know if the coach and/or captain are going to stick to what we as a team voted for until it is race day but I sure hope they don’t go back on what we all agreed on. I’m not good at trusting people, and now two people who I’m supposed to trust to put the good of the team before their own agenda have outed themselves as people who are biased against women…I don’t want to spend the season constantly keeping an eye out for gender biased behaviour but I am already feeling a bit stressed and on guard about it, like I have to keep an eagle eye out to make sure the women on my team don’t get screwed over, sigh. This could really suck…

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A Helpful Tip?

15 Mar

I read a lot. For the most part I read whatever I think looks interesting, which, given my innate curiosity is pretty much everything lol. Something I read a fair amount of are articles, books, studies etc on eating healthy, fitness, getting in shape, losing weight…anything that somehow relates to leading a healthier lifestyle.

I read all these articles, books and studies for a couple reasons. One is because deep down I am still hoping for some sort of miracle-super-easy-quick-fix to my fat problem. Hey, if I can find something that can actually legit get me in shape faster than what I am doing now sign me up! Also, I read these various pieces for information, to learn what is best for my body, what I might be doing that is actually causing harm, tips and tricks, ideas…things like that. There is no way any one person can know everything about a topic, definitely no way I know everything about getting fit, so why not keep reading everything you can get your hands on? Keep learning, keep expanding your ideas, keep opening your mind to suggestions, keep trying new things…what could it possibly hurt?

So the other day I am reading an article titled: 8 Clever Tips For The Body You Want. If you read enough of these articles you’ll find they mostly all say the same things. Apparently there aren’t that many easy suggestions to pass along *rolls eyes* but one of the suggestions in this article caught my eye, caught it enough I took a screenshot of it so I would be able to reference it later.

my screenshot

my screenshot

The gist of this tip is, ready for it? Dun-dun-dunnnnn…eat the same things daily. Repeat the same exercises over an over. Basically bore yourself to tears by doing the same things over and over again. Apparently, “in one study, less food variety was associated with successful weight loss maintenance” and according to Dr. Oz (yeah, that guy from tv) “research is showing that putting a cap on the variety of foods and tastes you experience will help you control your weight. Find a healthy lunch you like – salad with grilled chicken and olive oil…and have it every day…”

Every.Day.

Basically bore your taste buds into submission. Oh and doing the same workout over and over? Suuuuure, I mean it’s not like you have to worry about your body getting minimal benefit from an oft repeated workout because our bodies are smart and quickly figure out how to get through a workout routine they recognize by doing the least amount of work….oh wait, yes we do have to worry about that! *rolls eyes*

Seriously Dr. Oz? Seriously??

I don’t know who came up with this particular article, I didn’t screenshot that part, oops! But I am baffled by this tip.

How is a person going to learn how to live a healthier lifestyle if their main way of eating is to eat the same thing everyday? All you’re doing is finding a couple healthy meals and hitting the repeat button every time you enter the kitchen. Sure, that may work for a little while, but what happens when that person goes to a potluck? To a restaurant? To a birthday party? To a work function where there is food? Basically, any social situation where you do not get to pick the exact meal put on your plate? How does someone navigate these food danger hot spots? If I only eat salad with grilled chicken for lunch and then my work puts on a lunch function and there are soooooo many tables of super tasty foods in front of me, how have I picked up the skills needed to help me (1) make a healthy food choice using the foods available to me and (2) resist all the super tasty but bad for me foods that are there?

Maybe it is just me but if I was eating the same thing day after day then was put in a situation ( like the work lunch function, or a potluck at a friends place etc) I’d cave faster than a dog that smells steak and basically eat whatever looked tasty. For me, if I deprive myself of the majority of foods out there then am exposed to them I have no willpower to resist them because it’s been so long since I’ve tasted something different than my routine food. I will want nibbles of everything and we all know those nibbles add up quickly! *cough*stupid nibbles*cough*

Granted, this could just be because I have ridiculously weak willpower but I feel it is a valid point.

Wouldn’t it be better to learn one new healthy breakfast, lunch and dinner meal per week, slowly integrating the new healthy meals in to your life so that you get to eat healthy, experience new foods (or at least foods cooked in different ways than before) and bonus you actually enjoy eating instead of dreading it because you’ve been eating the same foods day in and day out?

When I did my super strict Paleo Plan I ate the same foods everyday, in the same order, cooked the same way, nothing ever varied. Did I lose weight? Well, technically yes, I actually built muscle so I lowered my body fat % but my scale had me going up a bit (ya know, cause of that whole muscle vs fat thing). Did I enjoy my food? No. It became a thing I had to do, had to deal with, and I couldn’t wait for each meal to be done because by week two I was so bored. For a while my willpower saved me from cheating. If I was out for dinner I’d order a salad, no dressing, grilled chicken breast on top. I can’t believe I’d pay $16 or so for something so basic but I did, all because it was as close as I could get to what I “should” be eating. I hadn’t learned from my strict Paleo Plan how to navigate eating in a restaurant, what to do if I was at a friends, how to grab something to eat on the go. All I had learned was to eat the same thing over and over and when I was in a situation that varied from my normal day-to-day schedule the Plan abandoned me to figure things out on my own…it’s like kicking a kitten to the curb when it isn’t yet weaned, no way I had the skills or know-how to figure things out on my own.

Sidenote, the kitten to the curb analogy made me look at my cat and get all “oh that’s such a mean thought” so I paused to cuddle my cat…something he doesn’t appreciate cause I woke him up lol 😛

Realistically, how long can a person eat the same foods on a daily basis?

I have to say I think this point, written up how it was written, is flawed. If they had said eat the same meals daily for two weeks than slowly add additional healthy meals that’d be ok. But this makes it sound like you should be eating the same foods daily for ever.

It’s way healthier to learn what foods are healthy, then learn how to cook a variety of dishes using those foods, eventually ending up with an arsenal of go-to meals that are healthy, tasty and varied enough you aren’t (1) bored to tears or (2) so deprived of taste variety you end up going overboard food-wise when put in a situation that is full of temptations. Well, in my opinion anyways…I’ll stop ranting now lol

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The Ups and Downs Of Shopping

19 Feb

Shopping, ugh, I have such a love-hate thing going on when it comes to shopping. As a  girl I am supposed to love! love! love! shopping for pretty much everything buuuuuut I don’t. 😛

The things I love to shop for? Gear for my various sports/activities, books, shoes, jewellery, purses, techie stuff…but since I don’t have a lot of money I usually end up buying stuff for my sports/activities and shoes lol

Things I hate shopping for? Clothes.

Yes, I admit it, I am a female who hates shopping for clothes…well, unless it’s clothes to be worn when exercising, hiking, dragon boating, running, basically sports clothes. But clothes for work or general socializing? Nuh-uh, don’t like it.

I’m never happy with what I look like hence hating to shop for clothes.

For the last couple months or so I’ve been oh so amazingly unhappy with my clothes. Every time I get dressed for work or to go hang with friends I feel ugly. I don’t like how my pants fit, I don’t like how they look, they make me miserable and self-conscious and eager to return home and put on some sweats or yoga pants. My tops I’m ok with, it’s the pants that are a problem.

I was convinced it is because I am too big…huh, I’m trying to find a nice way to say this, *deep breath* I was convinced I felt this way in my pants because I was too fat for them. I wasn’t when I bought them, they fit great, so obviously if I don’t fit perfectly in them anymore it must be because I got too fat for them, right? Right. It’s depressing, and made me even less eager to shop than normal. I kept telling myself that if I am so unhappy with how I look in my clothes then stop being a dumb ass, lose the weight I so obviously gained, and fit back in to them. If I ate something I shouldn’t, then felt uncomfortable in my pants I would mentally yell at myself (cause yelling out loud to myself is just weird 😛 ) and basically tell myself my punishment for eating something bad for me was feeling so miserable in my pants. Not the healthiest way to be looking at things…

maybe this should be my new plan? ;)

maybe this should be my new plan? 😉

Couple months or so ago I bought two new pair of pants, a pair of jeans and a pair of cords. I bought them both a size up from what all my other pants are because I thought that must be what I needed, a size larger. I’ve been having trouble with both those pairs of pants though because they are too big, after about 20 minutes of wearing them they have become so loose I am constantly having to pull them up – soooo not an attractive thing to be doing. *rolls eyes* and under normal circumstance they’d be donated to a thrift store or relegated to “fat day pants”. Thing is, I don’t own enough pants to be giving any away or wearing certain ones so infrequently.

So I was confused, how could one size fit too snug and the next size up fit way too loose? Then I had a realization…except for those two pants that I bought in the larger size I hadn’t bought pants (except yoga or hiking or dragon boat pants) in three years. THREE YEARS!! I’ve been wearing the same freakin pants for years! No wonder they aren’t fitting properly anymore! They’ve been washed how many times? Worn how many times? Sat in, run in, moved around in, lived in for how long? Oh yeah, that’s right, 3 years.

That little tidbit of info made me feel not quite so bad about how my pants are fitting. Have I changed since I bought them, well yeah, sure I have. But so have the pants. They don’t hold their shape as well as they used to, over time the leg length has shrunk so it’s a good bet the rest of the way they fit has shrunk, they are old, and while I keep my clothes in as good condition as possible they are showing their age. I’d say they are due to be retired.

I decided with this paycheque I would buy myself a pair of pants, maybe two if I could find a good sale somewhere. I had almost convinced myself the shopping might be fun and not horrific since maybe I’m not the monstrous size I feel I must have become since my pants haven’t been fitting me but then reality set in lol Dragon boat season is starting early this year, a whole month earlier and I needed new water proof pants cause mine became un-water proof by the end of last season and while yes, this is a water sport so I should expect to get wet, being on the water at 7:30pm at night in February is damn cold and it’s sensible to wear water proof gear until the weather warms up. No point getting drenched and cold and being sick when you don’t have to be. I was at Mountain Equipment Co-Op, shopping for the water proof pants (which I found, and while I bought the cheapest pair they were by no means cheap, ugh) when I saw some sweet hiking pants on sale for $20. I figured I’d try them on since they were such a great deal and omg they fit beautifully! It’s amazing how good I felt about how I looked when I wore them! I didn’t feel self-conscious or ugly or fat or like I wanted to hide, I felt like I looked good. 🙂 It’s been a looooong time since I’ve felt that. Obviously I bought them. Oh, and the size? The equivalent to the size of the pants that no longer fit me. Weird.

So now I don’t have the money to replace my work/socializing pants because I bought the water proof pants and the hiking pants but the water proof ones are a necessity and the hiking pants were too good a deal to pass up, shrug. Guess I’ll have to keep battling the feelings I get in my three year old pants until I have another paycheque that has some money left over and I can go find some new clothes. If I can hold on to how I felt when trying on the hiking pants then maybe I won’t even mind going shopping for new work/social pants…maybe! 😉 lol

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Another 30 Day Challenge?

11 Feb

The other day I was bored and started searching for 30 Day Challenges. I was actually thinking I’d redo the 30 Day Squat Challenge I did last summer because I liked the results I got from it and well, I know I can do it lol Nothing like going in to a challenge knowing you’ve done it once and can do it again! lol 😛 Also, I’ve gotta get my act in gear and get in shape, these challenges are nice additions to an already existing work out plan but they are also a great motivator. I mean, if you go and do a bunch of squats well, you’ve warmed up your body, you’re revved up and thinking you can handle anything which in turn can quite easily lead to a gym session or a jog (weather permitting) or at least working out to an exercise dvd, right? Right!…well, at least for me…

So I was searching for the 30 Day Squat challenge from last summer and came across this little gem…

30daysquatchallengeSorry it is so blurry, I’ll try to get a better image up but for now this is the best I could find.

In some ways it is the same as any other squat challenge, it gets you up to doing 200 squats in a day within 30 days buuuuut the main difference is that instead of just doing your standard squat you do 5 different squat poses per session. I love it! This way you are getting a more well rounded lower body workout because you are working different parts of your legs by doing the different types of squats! Yay!

To give you an example yesterday I did 6 each of the five different squats:

-narrow squat (feet together)

-narrow squat with a kick back (legs together, do a narrow squat, when you come up lift leg backwards)

-standard squat

-standard squat with side leg lift (do a standard squat, when you come up lift leg to the side)

-sumo squat

For the narrow squats with kick back and the standard squat with side leg lifts one rep is both legs, for example, you do a narrow squat, get to standing position, lift right leg back, then do the same thing but lift the left leg back, that is one set. This way a set of 6 means each leg gets lifted back 6 times. Does that makes sense?

I haven’t done my squats yet today and it is already 1:30am, doesn’t mean I won’t do them once I finish typing this and right before I go to bed but they sure will suck that little bit more because I left them so late lol My own fault though, sigh. 😛

A friend at work saw the print out and asked what it was so I showed her and she asked for a copy, she seemed really gung-ho about it which inspired a sorta brilliant idea in my head. Why not invite the staff at work to take part in the challenge, we can all do it together! I don’t mean we all get together daily and do the squats at the same time, lol, that’d be weird! 😛 Just that if we all know each other is doing the challenge then it might make us more likely to finish, we can encourage each other and we can bitch to each other about how hard it is lol, stuff like that.

I thought it was a great idea, the others? Not so much. sigh. One of the girls said no, her reasons ranged from she is too fat to do squats, to she is too short to do squats to just plain no. Another girl already had a work out plan she follows and doesn’t want to add to it (fair enough). One wants to do it and was all “yeah, I’m in!” but when I asked her today how her squats went yesterday she was all ready with reasons why she couldn’t get them done. The girl who initially was all gung-ho didn’t start yet but said she would today after work so next time we have a shift together I’ll ask her how it is going…at this point I am wondering if any of them will actually do it, sigh.

oh so true

oh so true

I get it, you have to want to work out in order to work out, at least initially. You have to have something inside of you driving you to be uncomfortable, to get sweaty, to force you up off the comfy couch and out the door to the gym or at least to the middle of the room where you then start doing squats which, even if you are in shape are hard work. All sorts of things can be a persons motivation but if you don’t have at least one thing motivating you juuuuust enough you aren’t going to change your habits and actually find the time and energy to do the work. I firmly believe you can always find some time in the day to exercise, it is just a matter of using that time for exercising and not for resting, or reading, or watching tv, or napping, or talking on the phone, or checking facebook or or or. There are a lot of things pulling all of us in a million different directions and almost always the first thing to get dropped when you have a lot  of things to juggle is working out. Like we all forget taking care of ourselves is more important than going on facebook or watching tv.

I used to be good at prioritizing working out, I always found time for it. If my social plans couldn’t be worked around my working out then I changed the social plans, not the work out session. Whereas lately I’ll cut the work out session at the drop of a hat and find a way to make any excuse sound legit. *rolls eyes* Pathetic. 😦

I’m trying to fix this, and I’m hoping this new 30 day challenge will help me. I hate failing and that will help push me to complete the challenge. Also, I am looking at this as work towards training for the 8km I signed up to run, as well as helping me get back in shape for dragon boat season (which starts soon) and just in general helping me feel better about myself. I always feel better about myself when I am living a more active lifestyle but I am a naturally lazy person and have to really fight my lazy nature to get out there and do stuff lol. Since I can do the squats at home I have no excuse to not do them each day and the confidence I will start to feel the farther in to the challenge I get is something to look forward to!…so is the muscle definition! Don’t forget the muscle definition lol Last time I was surprised at how noticeable the change was in my thighs for muscle definition, it’ll be nice to get that back. 🙂

 

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Freaking. Out.

4 Feb

I am freaking out about three different things right now, all completely different, all on different serious-ness levels, and all messing with me, arg!

The first is on a stupid level: I seem to be a bottomless pit today, constant hunger (except for one period of time earlier this evening that I will tell you about farther in to this post), I don’t want to be eating like a crazy person today, but it seems to be a choice between eat more than I think I should be eating or feel starved. Oh and I don’t mean a little nibble “starved” but as I type this my tummy is rumbling and I am at a level of hunger that is super uncomfortable. I am at this level of hunger even though I ate breakfast, lunch and dinner aaaaand a snack three hours or so after dinner. Maybe I should have eaten more protein today, that fills a person up longer, or…what? I don’t know…something…I feel I should have done something throughout the day to prevent this constant hunger buuuut there is only so much food I am willing to eat so I guess I just have to suck it up and deal with feeling hungry. sigh.

By Mr Crocker via Deviant Art

By Mr Crocker via deviantArt

The second things I’m freaking out about is on a fun level: I signed up for the BMO Run, the options were 8km, half marathon or full marathon…I chose the 8km which I know to most will seem like a ridiculously short distance and not even worthy of a person’s time but the most I’ve ever “run” was a 5km and I didn’t run the whole thing, both times I did the 5km I did it with a friend and each time we ended up walking a good chunk of it. I’m excited because I’ve been wanting to run some sort of marathon type thing for a while now but I know I wouldn’t be able to run a half marathon let alone a full marathon cause I am sooooo not a runner lol 8km seems perfect, long enough it will be something to work towards and require me to do some training so I don’t suck on the day but not so long it kills me or I feel like a failure or terrified about not being able to complete it. Despite picking the shortest distance I am still freaking out a bit because like I said, I am not a runner, I don’t know for sure that I can actually do this, what if I suck so badly I can’t finish? That would be mortifying! Plus, I signed up for it alone, which will suck cause I’ll have no one to share the fun of the day with but I really want to try my best for this and if I suck I don’t want to be able to say it was cause the person I was with wanted to walk (or some other type of excuse), how well I do will rest solely on my shoulders…but it won’t be as much fun without a friend to share it with.

8km run bmo

The third thing I am freaking out about is kinda serious but I’m hoping I’ve blown it out of proportion: The doctor’s office called about my x-ray and CT scan results. I forgot my phone at home today, (felt like I was missing a vital piece of my body all day! lol), when I got home I checked my messages and I had one from the doctor’s office saying the doc wanted me to come in today as soon as I could to discuss the CT scan, I was to call them and they would fit me in. Um, what? Don’t they only want you to go in when it is something bad?? So, freak out part one! I called, as soon as I said my name the receptionist knew why I was calling (I’m hoping they were having a quiet day, not that she knows something bad is up and it is so horrifying it burned my name in to her memory…), I told her I forgot my phone and didn’t get her message till then and sorry but there was no way I could get there before the office closed (it was 4:40pm and they close at 5pm). She put me on hold, comes back and says the doc can stay till 6pm if I can get in before then to which I responded I am in the middle of cooking a stir fry so can’t really leave it, could I please go tomorrow? Freak out part two! She’s willing to stay late to see me?? OMG! She puts me on hold again, then comes back and asks if I am feverish (what?? weird!), I said no, so she said ok then tomorrow would be fine. A tad random don’t ya think? So now I have an appointment tomorrow at 4…crap, at 4 something, I can’t believe I forgot the time of the appointment! I’ll have to call them tomorrow to confirm, only me! lol 😛 Anyways! I now have an appointment with the doc tomorrow to talk about my hip and the results of the CT scan and I am freaking out because in my world you only have to go in to discuss test results when it is bad news. 😦 I don’t wanna go. *pout* If I ignore it won’t it go away? And before you say “no it won’t” I already know that cause I am the one sitting here with hip pain which I keep trying to ignore and it keeps not going away, stupid pain. Oh, and to make it worse, the pain is now in both hips not just the right hip, what the hell is going on in there? Stupid hips. sigh.

Stupid hip bones! Grr! by Elcadia on deviantArt

Stupid hip bones! Grr! by Elcadia on deviantArt

I don’t have any idea what might be wrong, which means my brain has been flying off in 20 different directions coming up with all kinds of ridiculous things it could be, none of them are positive of course lol I was so freaked out that after I got off the phone and finished cooking my dinner I stared at it for a while cause I wasn’t hungry, the news actually messed with my appetite, nothing messes with my appetite! Least not to suppress it so ya know I’m worried when I don’t want to eat…I eventually did eat but only because I didn’t want to waste the food, not out of hunger…which is ironic considering I’ve been a bottomless pit all day…

So there we have it, I am in full freaking out mode, mostly about the doctor visit and her level of insistence at seeing me as soon as can be arranged. I keep thinking it’ll end up being nothing serious and this freaking out will be for nothing and I’ll be pissed if I get a wrinkle or white hair from this but then a little part of my brain starts with the “what if it isn’t a little thing” and I’m right back to freaking out.

I think I’ll try to concentrate on the BMO Run, least that is a fun freak out topic…

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What I Don’t Like To Hear

27 Jan

Two posts in one day?! Say whaaaa? That’s crazeeee! lol 😛

I went to a new doctor today about my hip (catch up here) and it appears I am going to be dragged in to the world of routine medical care whether I want to or not. *sits and throws tantrum* sigh.

It’s not that I don’t like doctors, although that is what I say cause it is easier than explaining why I avoid them, it is that, unless it’s an actual crisis/emergency/I’m-gonna-die situation I don’t see the point. It seems that so many people go to the doctor for the littlest thing, it’s a waste of the patient’s time, the doctor’s time, our healthcare system *rolls eyes* We have immune systems! We have bodies that most times can heal themselves if you take care of them properly! Stop with the excessive visits to doctors!

phew! Sorry about that little rant…

Anyways!

I had to to the ER the beginning of January because of my hip, because of my mentality towards medical care it is safe to say that if I actually go for help I really need it. The end results of my two ER visits were inconclusive and confusing. If my hip got better on its own I wasn’t to go back, if it stayed the same or got worse I was to go back, all while being on some pills. The pills had nasty side effects so I stopped taking them and over time the pain decreased so I could walk without crutches, then without a limp, then fairly normally. I still have pain but it is a manageable level and I can function daily, which in my world means I don’t need any more medical care.

Apparently I am the only one who thinks that…

A friend of mine kept bugging me to go to a doctor for follow up, when I told her I don’t have a doctor I just go to walk-in clinics when absolutely necessary she got mildly disgusted with me, said there was no reason to not have a family doctor, and gave me the name of her doctor. Then she badgered me daily for over a week to call and get an appointment! Badgered!

I caved, called the doctor and today was my appointment.

Turns out the doc is pretty nice, she sat and chatted with me for quite a while about my hip, about what could be wrong, she can’t diagnose until she sees the X-Ray and CT results from my hospital visits so we arranged for her to get those and she already has me getting another X-Ray next week so she can compare the first one to a more recent one. Ugh. She explained a lot of things in terms a non-doctor can understand and expressed mild disdain for the lack of results I got from the ER docs.

However, she said things I really didn’t want to hear, like:

– we’ll almost definitely be getting you in to see an orthopedic surgeon

– next week get another x-ray of the hip done

– did they take blood at the hospital? if not I’m going to get some blood work done

– they prescribed those meds to you?? that is a really strong dosage! no wonder you had side effects

– let’s go over your family history

– you have a lot of risk factors we’ll want to keep an eye on

– once we’ve dealt with your hip I want to get your cholesterol levels tested and arrange for other exams/tests

– one of the causes of your hip pain is a vein could have been cut off and a part of your hip could be “dying”

– I’ll see you again soon

The woman wants to get me jabbed with needles to test my freakin cholesterol, wtf! It’s fine! Just leave it alone! No need to go digging for problems! Besides that, if people were meant to give blood so often we’d have all be born with valves in our arms, eesh. *flares nose*

The mention of an orthopedic surgeon disturbs me also but I’m trying to ignore that one…

After the appointment was over I was walking back to my suv and passed by a coffee shop I never get to go to anymore cause I’m not in that area often, they have a really yummy tea so I went in to get one and came out with not only the tea but this…

Best cinnamon bun ever!

Best cinnamon bun ever!

They advertise it as “the best cinnamon bun ever” and I gotta say, they could be right. I was going to slack, eat it when I got home, then use it as an excuse to not cook dinner but as my previous post shows I didn’t do that, I made stir fry, so this became dessert. Thing was, after dinner I was so full that for hours I was convinced I wouldn’t be eating the cinnamon bun tonight cause the tummy was full but luckily my stomach’s dessert compartment opened up and that cinnamon bun fit right in lol 🙂

Another thing I got was this…

pretty dreamcatcher

pretty dreamcatcher

I know I know! You aren’t supposed to buy a dreamcatcher for yourself, you are only supposed to get them as gifts or make them for yourself but I have been dreamcatcher-less for a while now and I really needed one. For those who don’t know a dreamcatcher is placed above your bed and during the night bad dreams get caught in the webbing, then when the sun comes up the sun destroys them, thereby ensuring the sleeping person only gets happy dreams. The dreamcatcher I had for years and years (seriously, it was a gift in high school from a friend) became so ragged the leather was breaking and the feathers were coming off so it had to be replaced. Someone I knew bought me a new one and it was lovely but we no longer speak and I wasn’t comfortable having something from them guarding my sleep so I took it down hmm, over a year ago. So all this time I have had nothing guarding my dreams, sadness. I saw this in a window of a shop I passed and I dunno, it felt right, like I was meant to have it, I wasn’t even actively looking for one so it was odd I felt so connected to it. Great, now I sound like a hippie lol I went in and it wasn’t expensive so it became mine and is now hanging over my bed. 🙂 I feel better having it there, especially with words like “orthopedic surgeon” running through my head lol

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Peering Over My Shoulder

24 Jan

Today is day two of my Food Journal and I am surprised at how much my food choices were affected by the knowledge someone was going to be reading (and judging!) my eating habits. Who’d of thunk it? lol

I wanted to eat pizza but didn’t because I didn’t want the trainer to read that I ate pizza, just like I didn’t eat a whole whack load of other things today because of the judgement that will be passed on my food choices.

It’s like Big Brother or George Orwell but in a smaller way. 😛

Normally I try to not let other peoples judgements of me affect my behaviour. I mean yeah ok, I know it does but I try to not let it affect me too too much. This time though, I am choosing to alter my behaviour because I know what I want to do is “bad” and having someone figuratively looking over my shoulder keeps me from indulging in the self -destructive behaviours that will do nothing good for me. It’s like having a little coach on my shoulder helping me to resist the foods I shouldn’t be eating. It’s so much easier to decide to not eat something when I know he will be reading my food journal on Wednesday.

Lately I’ve been eating foods I shouldn’t be, I’ve been eating foods in larger quantities than I should be and to top off those oh-so-lovely decisions I haven’t been exercising nearly as often as I should be. This has resulted in me feeling icky, slower than normal, fatter…even though I know my food choices are making me feel this way I can’t seem to stop my behaviour, or at least I wasn’t able to until today. Today though, when I thought about eating pizza, even though I wanted it, I kept thinking “nope cause he’ll read it”. Even though I know I shouldn’t be eating it, and normally that knowledge would be enough to stop me, lately knowing that isn’t enough, buuuut knowing someone else is going to know what I was eating was enough.

I don’t know why I am needing an outsider to help me have self-control over my food but I do and luckily for right now I have one, yay! 😀

Don’t think I managed to eat perfectly today, I didn’t, but I did manage to minimize the screw ups which is nice, lol. 🙂

I didn’t make it to the gym but I did go for a nice walk to the grocery store which I am going to pretend counts as exercise lol I used my Runtastic App to track the walk there, paused it while I was shopping then restarted it on the walk home. I’m cranky with myself because I forgot to restart it right away so the info is a bit wrong because it didn’t track the entire walk home. What I have from it says I walked 3.16km and it took me 1:07:17. It is a pathetic distance and if I was going running or hiking I’d put my nose in the air at such a short distance but hey, I can’t control where the store is lol and I’d like to point out that the walk home had me carrying two fairly heavy grocery bags. Not like I didn’t know I was going to be buying food but I didn’t take in to account how heavy some of the items would be, especially when they are stuffed in to two bags lol

The walk home got me thinking about weight I have already lost. I don’t know the exact weight of the two bags but I know they weighed enough my arms were hurting from carrying them, the straps were digging in to my hands and my breathing became a bit laboured. Not hugely laboured, if I’d been walking with someone I’d have still been able to talk but I was breathing heavier and faster than normal. I made sure to walk the same pace I normally walk, even with the addition of the bags, hoping to turn the walk in to a bit more of a work out.

When I started breathing heavier I started thinking about the extra weight I was carrying, how at one point, not all that long ago that extra weight wouldn’t have been weight in a bag but weight that was on my body. I realized that if I was doing that walk a couple years ago I might have been breathing heavily not because I was holding something but just because my body was that much larger, and more out of shape then it is now, and if walking that distance/elevation would have made me out of breath just from walking how much worse would it have been if I was carrying my groceries back home? It’s an unsettling thought…

It’s easy to forget how far I have come, how much I have changed (for the better), how 3-4 years ago I would have been so happy at the thought of being how I am now. Because now, all I think about is how much farther I have to go and how I never seem to be able to get there. I think about how much I still want to change and how I seem to be at a level that asks more of me than I am able to give. I know I won’t get results without putting in the work, I know I won’t reach my dreams without making an effort, I know I have to do more than I am doing now to get where I want to be but in the day-to-day act of living I seem to forget the larger far-reaching goal and I focus on the in-the-moment gratification.

how far

A small sacrifice now will make for a happier future me. I used to know that deep in my bones, I didn’t even have to remind myself when offered something tempting because it was one of the mantras I lived, but lately, sigh, lately I don’t think that automatically, I don’t even remind myself when having to make a choice, I just say “screw it” to having impulse control and eat whatever – or at least that is how it feels to me.

It’s important to remember how far I have come while not letting go of the lessons I have learned along the way and using that knowledge to keep me on the path to a healthier, fitter, happier me. I guess sometimes I just need a kick in the butt to remember! 😛

 

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Delayed Gratification

16 Jan

Online shopping teaches us a valuable lesson. It teaches us that sure when you press “purchase” you may get that excited feeling in your tummy because you just bought something awesome but that doesn’t mean you’ll get to enjoy that item right away, not like when you go shopping in a store.

Oh delayed gratification, how you taunt me!

Recently I bought boots, boots that I have been wanting for months and months. I patiently stalked the boots online, waiting until they were at a sale price I could afford and when they were reduced in price I pounced! I quickly put a pair of those boots in my online shopping cart, hit the checkout button and presto! I became the proud owner of a pair of kick ass boots. Wellll, an owner in name only since they didn’t just magically jump out of my computer screen onto my lap. Nope. They are in transit somewhere, sloooooowly making their way to me. Ok fine, not that slowly, I’m just impatient so the 3-5 business days it will take to get those boots feels like forever. I know I know, first world problems *rolls eyes*

2014-01-15 00.04.52

The other day, I bought a jacket, yup, I was online shopping again. I can vaguely justify this purchase because I have been trying since November to find a jacket and snow pants for snowshoeing and have been having miserable luck with it. I have basically stopped looking in the stores because the jackets they put on sale only seem to be in extra-small size and even then they cost $300 and up. How is that a sale price?? And how is it that everyone is ok with the cost of winter sports gear?? It’s ridiculous! So yeah, every week or so I check online for jackets and snow pants. I haven’t been too rushed because we’ve had a depressing lack of snow on the mountains this year so even if I had all my gear I wouldn’t be able to go snowshoeing yet. The lateness of the snow kinda worked in my favour that way. Well, guess who got snow? Yup, us! WooHoo! Rain in the city, snow in the mountains, finally! Only problem is now I wanna get my ass up to the mountain but can’t cause I don’t have the right clothes to go through the trails on my snowshoes without freezing, or coming out drenched lol.

I found a jacket, my size, on sale, and if I signed up for the email list from the company I’d get an additional discount on my purchase aaaand they were having a “spend x amount of money get free shipping” promotion. The sale price and the free shipping were both ending the next day so I felt mildly pressured to buy! buy! buy! Even though I hated the idea of buying a jacket online I hadn’t tried on it seemed this was going to be the only way I could get one so out came the credit card and boom! I increased my debt load. 😛

I was all excited the next day, thinking how I bought a new jacket blah blah blah but the excitement faded when I realized there was no real point in telling anyone about it since I couldn’t actually describe it except for what I read in the description and saw in the pictures. I can’t talk about how good it fits (hopefully it does!) or how I love the colour (it might not look the same in person) or how warm/waterproof/epic it is cause I haven’t actually had a face-to-jacket experience yet. It’s kinda driving me nuts lol

You know where else you have to cope with delayed gratification? Weight loss. Getting in shape. Changing to a healthy lifestyle. Building muscle. Whatever your plan is, whatever your final goal is, whatever you want to call it…they all teach us about delayed gratification cause duuuude, none of that stuff happens overnight, sadly. 😛

patience

You may change to healthy eating habits and follow them religiously, you may start a work out plan and never deviate from it, you may do or change any or all aspects of your life to achieve whatever changes to your body you want to achieve but the changes won’t happen overnight, they won’t even happen within a month, you just have to trust in what you are doing and wait. Wait for the changes to be visible in the mirror, visible to other people, visible to your critical judgement of your body.

That waiting can be hard. That waiting can invite doubt, skepticism, impatience, it can invite all kinds of things that are hard to battle. You may start to think you are doing something wrong, that you are failing because you don’t see changes yet, you may be tempted to go back to your old way of eating, your old way of not exercising, you may think what does it matter when all those changes you made to your lifestyle aren’t creating change to your body.

This is where patience comes in. The same patience I have to attempt to have so I don’t go nuts about the boots and jacket that are en route to me through the postal system is the same patience I have to try to hold on to when looking at my body and being upset I don’t see changes to it despite having made changes to my eating and/or exercising.

I have to attempt to be realistic about the process. I can’t expect the boots or jacket to show up on my doorstop the next day just like I can’t expect my body to be instantly slimmer and toned because I made changes to my diet and exercise regime last month. The changes that have begun are internal, I’m sure my innards are getting healthier even if my outer body isn’t showing much difference.

Something else I have to remember is to stop being so hard on myself when I don’t see those changes right away. I am impatient. I want to wake up tomorrow and look exactly how I want to look even though I know that is impossible, I’m sick of working at it, fighting for it, I want the results to be here already. When I look in the mirror and see the results aren’t here yet I start to call myself names, put myself down, think poorly of myself. I judge myself more harshly then anyone else ever could, I know all the right buttons to push, all the best mean comments to make, all the areas I am most sensitive about to criticize. I am my worst critic. I am my meanest judge. I am my biggest doubter.

And I have to stop that.

I have to trust that I will get there, that one day I will look in a mirror and like what I see, or at least not hate it. Just like I know the boots and jacket will eventually arrive I have to have faith that the changes I am working for will eventually be visible. Otherwise I’ll spend my whole adult life hating my body and that is just a waste of my time. 😛

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